Ask VT vs Am I Secure? Forensic Scan

With Ask VT you can check URLs and files for malware using the online service VirusTotal (https://www.virustotal.com). VirusTotal is a free service from Google that scans Internet addresses and files with a variety of virus scanners. You can select the links and files using the buttons provided, or drag them from other apps onto the Ask VT home screen, such as onto the Trojan horse. Ask VT can also be called from the Share menu in other apps. In Apple's Mail app and in Safari, the Share menu appears when you press a little longer on a link. This app is freeware. It comes with absolutely no warranty. Use it at your own risk.

Am I Secure? performs forensic analysis of your iPhone or iPad to find signs of compromise. If you are a journalist, activist, executive, lawyer, government official or anyone with reason to think you may be of interest to a sophisticated adversary, this app is built for you. The same applies if you hold digital assets in self-custody. The device holding your keys is the target, and that device is what Am I Secure? examines. WHAT A COMPROMISED DEVICE MEANS Your whole life is on your phone. Private messages, email, photos, contacts, financial information. If you can read it, so can someone who has compromised the device. Encryption protects your messages in transit; it does not protect anything once the device itself is under someone else's control. An attacker in that position can read your messages before they are encrypted and after they are decrypted, see your location, take your stored credentials, and reach any account you are signed in to. They can listen through the microphone to conversations in the room, record through the camera, and follow your movements. There is generally no way to tell from using the device. WHY THIS REQUIRES A DIFFERENT APPROACH iOS is among the most secure consumer platforms available. iOS does not let any app, including security apps, look outside its own container or "sandbox". No security app on your device can inspect the processes, the filesystem, or the behavior of the rest of the system. That is a deliberate security property of the platform, and it is why an app running on your phone can only report on your settings, not on what is actually running. Am I Secure? works differently. You generate a system diagnostic "sysdiagnose" file using the tool built into iOS. That file is produced by the operating system itself, not by us, and it contains a detailed record of processes, logs, and system state. You share that file with the app, which uploads it to our servers. We analyze it and report what we find. The diagnostic file is end-to-end encrypted on your device before it is uploaded and stays encrypted until it reaches hardware we own and operate in our own facilities in Canada and the European Union (EU). It is not decrypted or accessible by any third party, including intermediary data center and network operators. Once analysis is complete the file is deleted. A HUMAN REVIEWS ANYTHING UNUSUAL Where our automated analysis flags something, our team examines the results by hand before anything is reported to you. The same automated analysis pipeline is used by our government clients via our on-premises Private Protection suite. WE LOOK FOR ANOMALIES, NOT JUST KNOWN INDICATORS Most detection tools match against published indicators of compromise. The moment those indicators become public, the operators behind commercial surveillance tools change their software to avoid them, and signature matching stops working against the new version. We compare your device against a baseline of expected iOS behavior instead. That can surface anomalies that do not match public indicators. MEDIA COVERAGE Reviewed by Forbes cybersecurity contributor Davey Winder in December 2024, who wrote he was "very impressed with the capabilities of this app." WHAT ELSE THE APP CHECKS, FOR EVERYONE • Whether your iOS version is current, overall and for your specific device • Lockdown Mode status • Lock screen, passcode, and biometric configuration • iCloud Private Relay and VPN status • Whether connections to well-known sites are being intercepted or inspected • Third-party keyboards installed on the device • Device integrity • Your processor's security features, network details, and diagnostic information SUBSCRIPTION The Advanced Security Scan requires a subscription, available as an in-app purchase (monthly or annual). For the Government & Enterprise Edition, search for Am I Secure? Endpoint Security here on the App Store. Terms of Use: https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/